Neo-Traditionalism

What is Neo-Traditionalism?

This was a question asked of me today by Perkunas, and it's one I have been thinking about since...
I think it is, for me at least, a personal take on Wilderness Skills, it is the blending of "Old School" woodsmanship and modern Survival/Bushcraft Skills...

For me it is also the return to actual skills over equipment, it is my effort to get away from Gore-Tex and Titanium and back into long term use gear, travelling light and using my knowledge rather than rely on gadgets... an attempt to get away from the Synthetic environment and get back into the woods like our forebears did.

The "Mentors" of this style of woodsmanship are:

• Kepheart (Camping and Woodcraft) (Camp Cookery)
• GW Sears (Nessmuk) (Woodcraft and Camping)
• Sir Francis Galton (The Art of Travel)
• Kreps (Woodcraft)
• John Keast Lord (At Home in the Wilderness)

These are the main sources for woodsmanship of this kind, and they often cross-reference each other too...
I don't like to use the terms Mentor or Survival, I like to think of my studies to be more akin to a salad bar, I can see all the information in front of me so that I can pick and choose what I want to use.

I temper what I read from the old writers with modern science and knowledge, I use modern gear if it will last, or a modern analogue of an older item, a lot of my methods would be seen as close to what a re-enactor would do, but to me it is more like experimentation, a lot of my kit would resemble that used by an 18th Century Woodsman, yet it is a modern version... I wear regular clothing and use modern tarps and hammocks, stainless steel pots and canteens, yet only if it will last my grand kids lifetime...

I am a modern man, I live in the 21st Century, yet my knowledge is firmly rooted in the past, using the "forgotten" ways of the past in a modern interpretation.

I originally wrote about this same topic back in September in my post:  Return to Tradition

And to date it has held up to the test of common sense, that 18th Century personal quality that seems to be lacking today...

All of the books mentioned in this post are freely available at either Archive.org or via Project Gutenburg for download as PDF files some are also available in Audiobook format for free via Librivox.com, simply enter the name of the author or the title.

Safe Trails...

Karl